The Little Geeni

Although I usually post on topics related to business strategy or marketing, a few weeks back I posted an article about my experience of getting hacked and a related tutorial on how I went about recovering from my Joomla site hack.

Apparently I wasn’t alone.  In the ensuing weeks, it has become my most visited post and has encouraged more people to sign up for my feed than any other article I have written.

That got me thinking about the power of trends and how I might go about using what people are already searching for to grab peoples attention.

Paris and Britney can help you…maybe

This article is not about recovering from your site getting hacked.  Instead is about trends, how to find out what they are, and how to take advantage of them to help drive visitors to your site.

To track what is hot (no Paris pun intended), I usually use Google Trends.
http://www.google.com/trends

This is a free service and allows you to compare different search terms for relative search volume, where these searches come from, and for more popular terms, they also link relevant news articles to search volume peaks.

I have never been a trend marketer

It’s not that I can’t or that I find it morally offensive.  The simple fact is that I have never been particularly hip, trendy, or ahead of the curve on the newest fad.  I tend to stick to long term marketing strategies with tried and true metric analysis.  My method is similar to how I invest.  I don’t day trade and I prefer to plan on the 10% long-term average rather than looking at my portfolio every day (Thank god since my balance is in the crapper over the last year)  It’s not sexy, it’s not hip, but it has worked in every business I have run and made me a millionaire in the process.  That’s cool enough in my book.

But I also realize that blogging is a new game. Especially for me.  I have only been doing this for a few months, so I am also in the experimentation stage. I am starting to understand that there may be real marketing value in occasionally chasing after the shiny new firetruck to roll down the street.

Here is how I use trends to drive traffic:

OK. My own stats prove that waaaay more people are searching for help on recovering for a site hack than they are for advice on how to build a solid marketing strategy.  I get it.  I’m sad, but I get it. So, assuming I am going to hop on the trend band wagon, how do I decide what trend to follow, and how do I incorporate it into my area of expertise?

Here is what I did:

I know my site got hacked.

I know that people are interested in the topic

I know that I have sites that use both Joomla! And WordPress

I know that both types of sites have similar weaknesses

So I pulled out my trusty google trend search and compared the search volume for “wordpress hack” and “joomla hack”  What I found was that Joomla was searched a bit more often and there seemed to be a spike back in Q3 of 2008.  Because there was not much news coverage on the events, there were no links tied to the spikes, but if you search some other topics: For example Bush vs Obama, you will see that there are usually specific events tied to peaks and valleys.

So how does this help me?

Well for starters, it lets me know that Joomla seems to be searched for a little bit more often than WordPress, especially in Q3 of ’08 for some reason. At that point, I might want to try to dig into the details further by seeing what actually happened during that time period.

What I was hoping to see was a huge difference in popularity which would give me a clear cut direction on which topic to focus on.

For example: In the case below, if I wanted to find some way to incorporate a train-wreck whore into my article, the choice is pretty clear.  Paris is the slut of choice.

 
So going back to my Joomla Hack Vs WordPress Hack, my plan is to create a tutorial for BOTH  now that I have this information.  Since there is no clear cut winner, but both have a decent amount of search traffic, I might as well proceed with a tutorial that can help visitors deal with the pain in the ass of a hack on either platform.

The second thing I plan to do is what you are reading right now.  That is – write an article in my area of expertise that ties in poplar search terms with my content. Now there is the danger of this article being completely irrelevant to those searching, and that is a real risk.  But the relative small amount of time it takes to create an article, and my own results proving that people will sign up for my marketing and strategy feed based on a technical tutorial seem to be proving me wrong.   My stats will ultimately prove this one way or another.

Isn’t this another “Punch the Monkey” banner?

In case you haven’t seen it 10 million times already, the “punch the monkey” banner is a slick and clever banner ad featuring a monkey that scrolls back and forth and you have to use your mouse to “punch” it with a giant boxing glove.  This click then takes you to whatever website the banner is pointed to.  This banner has been used on everything from dating sites to mortgage brokers.  Granted the click through rate is HUGE (everybody loves to punch a monkey apparently) but there is usually zero relevance to the final site and whatever goal the site owner had for your visit is rarely fulfilled. (Would you submit a mortgage application from this banner?) Granted some miniscule percentage of the population may be looking to refinance their home at the time, but chances are, most clicks are wasted.

The key to using trends to help boost your marketing is to actually offer something related to the hot keyword.  In my example, I DO have content on my site that teaches someone how to recover from a site attack.  In addition, many of the people suffering from the same attacks I had are also small business owners, bloggers, and marketing folks that could benefit from seemingly unrelated content on my site.

As a funny closing note, I also have proof that complete irrelevance will NOT boost sign-ups.  It goes like this:  When I first started my blog I wrote an article called  “The Jennifer Lopez Model vs. the Dolly Parton Model vs. the Kim Kardashian Model.”  At that point I wasn’t concerned at all about driving traffic to my site and in no way was trying to use those name searches to drive visitors to my site.  The goal was simply to be clever (The article is about different marketing approaches…big back end, big front end, big front and back end)  I still think it’s funny, but that’s me.

Anyway, lots of people enjoyed the article, but I can tell you that it’s also the highest abandon rate page on the entire site. That tells me that many of the visitors were in no way interested in what I had to say..and rightfully so.

The key is relevance. You CAN make popular search terms relevant to your content. You CAN make strategic decisions based on trend results. You just need to be smart about how you do it.

As always, I’d love to hear what you think or comments on your own experiences using trends as a diving board.  I’m usually pretty solid in my ideas on what works, but in this case, I’m just throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks.  I’ve been proven wrong plenty of times before. I have no issues with it happening again.

Google Drive, Hack, Joomla, Traffic, Trends, Using, Wordpress

Today almost all the businesses are looking to increase their ROI from their website. With that, they are also looking at ways and methods by which they can increase their website traffic and maximize their online presence.

The 5 strategies listed in this article will help you in not only optimizing your website for increasing your customers but also improving the cash flow from your website. The information that is summarized below will help you in getting immediate results for your business.

Strategy 1: Setting Your Goals
A website without a goal is like shooting a bullet in the dark. Just as the bullet looks for a target, so do Internet Marketers needs to prioritize their goals as to what they expect from their website. Most of the Internet Marketers have primarily 2 goals in mind:

1. Building quality leads, and
2. Increasing the number of leads.

In order to achieve the above, it is important that your website is crafted in such a way that it can encompass the following:

Attention: Your website should be well designed and contain valuable and informative content that can attract more and more visitors from the search engines.

Interest: Your website should be able to display the advantages of your products and services such that there is an interest in the visitor to know more about your product/service.

Decision: Your website should be able to illustrate to the visitor that by purchasing the respective product/service they would be making a smart decision.

Action: Your website should be able to cut through your competition and ensure that the prospect converts to a customer.

Strategy 2: Conversion Optimization
It’s a known fact that nearly 50% of the visitors are lost because they cannot find the product or service they are looking for. If this is true, then where are the visitors going? Are you tracking the conversions that are happening on your website? For example, you had 50 visits today. Out of the 50 that visited, 30 went to the product/service page. Out of that only 10 clicked on the sign up link and finally only 2 paid. This is what needs to be tracked and you should find out where were the points or the pages from where the visitors left and what were the reasons for their exit.

Some points to ponder on:
1. Is my websites’ navigation confusing?
2. Does it display a value proposition that would benefit the visitor
3. Are my headlines able to elicit action?
4. Is my content unique and keyword friendly?
5. Does my website offer a risk free guarantee?
6. Do I have testimonials on every page of my website?
7. Does my website look professional?
8. Does my website have VeriSign certificate?

A well designed website can definitely change the perspective of the visitor and that’s something that you would like to ensure in your website. Once you have succeeded in building a well developed website, your sales will increase, conversion rates will shoot up, customer retention will increase, and finally you will get rid of all that stress.

Strategy 3: Driving Immediate Traffic To Your Website
The fastest way by which you can beat the competition with a new website is by first performing AdWords Optimization. With AdWords Optimization, you can immediately beat your competitors and maximize your profits from day one itself. Unfortunately, many internet marketers fail in their initial attempts to either take advantage of this laser targeted traffic generating method or by not monitoring and managing their AdWords campaigns on a regular basis.

The Solution!
Identify the client acquisition cost! Let us consider a hypothetical case where the profit made on the sale of a product is $250. Per the data available, a sale is made from 250 visits. Therefore the visitor value is $1.00 for each visitor to book a profit! The best solution would be to bid low and keep a constant track on the metrics and performance of your campaigns.  Then tweak them as and when necessary.

Also, create unique advertisements that are focused around your main keywords. These advertisements can then be split tested based on the CTR – click through rate to see which ad is performing better when compared to others.

Strategy 4: SEO – Search Engine Optimization To Improve Your Ranking
In order to improve the ranking of your website, you need to ensure that your website is submitted to those sites (Directory Submission Sites, Article Submission Sites, Press Release Sites, Reciprocal Linking sites) that have a good page rank.

Points to note:
• Ensure that your website gets a huge number of relevant and quality links than your competitors.
• Ensure that the anchor text that is used in your website has the keywords that are present in the content of your web page.

Strategy 5: Testing & Tracking
The key to the success of your business lies in maintaining, monitoring, and managing your metrics. The metrics will tell you exactly as to what is converting and what is not.

For example:
What amount of sales happened yesterday?
Which page of your website converted the most?
From which location did the maximum number of visitors come?
What is my ROI?

The 5 strategies explained above will surely get you results that you would have never imagined if you implement and execute them correctly.

SEO Results, Speak, Spider, Strategies, Traffic

One always wants to drive traffic to their website or blog on a daily basis. This is normally achieved by performing various SEO traffic techniques that help in driving traffic by either doing it yourself or hiring an expert. In the former case, you will end up spending too much time doing it yourself as the processes are time consuming and cumbersome while in the latter case you will save on time but end up spending a lot of money to the provider.

However, there is one technique that can achieve a lot of traffic without having to spend too much or investing a lot of time. Article Writing!

Now the next question that may come to your mind is how does Article Writing drive traffic? It’s quite simple! The Internet comprises of a lot of information and there are millions of visitors, researchers and webmasters who are looking out for content for their blogs and websites. They have a choice where they can either create their own content or search on the Internet for a good quality article which they can utilize easily and quickly. This is exactly where you come in.

This article will describe the points that you need to keep in mind while writing your article:

Choosing the Right Headline:
It is important to create a headline that is appealing. A catchy headline will attract the attention of the viewer and will appeal them to read the article.

Preferred Word Count:
A good article is one that can convey a message, strategy and tips in 500 to 750 words. Making an article too long will dilute the attention of the reader and may be considered as a drag.

Preferred Software:
The best software is Microsoft Word as it has a spell check, word count option, synonyms option, etc. If you don’t have Word, you can use Open Office Word (which is free) or you can use Notepad.

Resource Box:
This is where one hits the bulls-eye. Use this box to the maximum possible extent. Write about the author, place a link of your website, add a freebie if possible, create a call to action phrase (Download now, Submit now, Click here, Submit here, etc).

Editing the Master Piece:
Once you have written your article, don’t forget to proofread and edit it. Ensure that the article is grammatically correct and free of any spelling mistakes, etc.

Now that you are done with writing the article, the next step would be to find an online website where you can submit your article. In this way you will be able to create an online archive of all your articles. If the site has an article content management system, then it will be excellent as it automates the submission of the article to your website.

Strategies for building the traffic through the article

This involves submitting your article to the top page rank article submission directories that will publish your article on their website. Create a blog if you don’t have one and post the article there. You can register with Yahoo Groups and post your articles there as well. Create an eBook on a collection of articles that relate to a topic and give it away for free. When you give it away for free, you are actually engaging in viral marketing which brings in wide exposure. Add the article to your website and if possible do generate some extra revenue by adding Google AdSense to it. You can also create an e-course on the articles that you have written and send it out through an auto-responder. Example, Free Auto Bot. Use any social media to build awareness around your article. Submit your article to various article announcement groups. For example, Yahoo Groups. These groups give a lot of eyeballs to your article as they can be used on their own websites.

By adopting the techniques listed above, you will be able to get loads of incoming links which boosts traffic and also the performance of your website.

SEO Articles, Increase, Spider, Traffic, Using, Want, Website

Only a few years back, you could be a successful entrepreneur without the need of a website. And the reason for this was very simple, before the nineties there was no Internet! With the introduction of the Internet, things changed drastically. And nowadays, it is impossible to even think of a globally successful enterprise that does not have an online presence. But what is more important is the fact, that just the presence of a visually appealing, information rich and well crafted website is not enough to get your company noticed on the internet. It has to be correctly marketed online through certain procedures so that it is prominently indexed by search engines. This is the primary reason why SEO or Search Engine Optimization has become such an important key to Internet business success. 

We all know the importance of search engine rankings these days. Therefore, choosing a SEO friendly domain name means that you have started on the right note in the virtual world. One of the crucial roles in search engine rankings is played by domain names related to keywords that focus on your business and website. It definitely goes a long way in attracting target audience, getting increased conversions and generating business.

The process of choosing the right domain name needs careful considerations and deliberations, when you are thinking of starting a new website. And this is especially important if search engine optimization is going to be the main tool for directing traffic to your website. A SEO friendly domain name is one of the key factors that contribute to the success of the website. Therefore, you have to keep in mind the objective of your website and accordingly choose targeted keywords that you are planning to use to get top search engine rankings for your site. Inserting the main keywords of your business into the URL is a good idea. This is because not only is your website theme kept same throughout but Google, too, looks favorably on it.

Now, let us see what the different factors are that can be adopted to make a SEO friendly domain name.

Keywords in the Domain Name
Keywords play the role of a catalyst in a domain name. Though the keywords themselves do not constitute the entire process of SEO but they definitely contribute in making the entire procedure happen at a much faster rate.

Stick with the “.com”
The top level domain or TLD remains the most popular extension for a domain name. A .com domain definitely allows credibility boost. It is the most widely accepted extension. Of course, we can’t neglect that there are a lot of successful websites that end with a “.net”, “.uk”, or a “.biz”, but at the same time a .com extension by far is the most recalled one. If your business happens to be a new one, do you really want your customers to forget all about you just because they recalled to type in a “.com” instead of your “.edu”, and as a result couldn’t go back to your site! However, there are certain exceptions to this rule, especially if your business is geographically constrained and targets only local customers, in that case a “.au” will work as well.

Shorter and Catchier

It is best to have a domain name that is short and catchy. It is easier for visitors to recall and remember these. And you definitely don’t want a website that loses out on traffic because the domain name is too long, tricky or complicated to remember. Short names can also be typed more easily. Ensure that your domain name is easy to remember and easy to type.

No Hyphens or Numbers
Use of hyphenated or numbered domain names should be avoided. This is because it creates complications. Most often than not such domain names are forgotten easily, because it can’t be recalled where exactly the hyphen or the number has to be placed. You may end up losing your customers to other similar named websites, who do not use a hyphen or a number. And more often than not, hyphenated domain names sound like cheap substitutes of the real thing.

Type-In Traffic
This is when someone simply arrives at a particular website by just typing what they are searching for in their URL bar, and add a “.com” at the end. And a lot of people actually do that! Therefore, if you can choose a domain name that has an exact match keyword then you have better chances of receiving traffic. Also these kinds of domain names have better SEO benefits going for them.

Choosing a domain name that is SEO friendly can work wonders for your business by attracting lots of visitors to your website. With a heavy inflow of traffic, there are better chances of increases in conversion. All this definitely contributes in making your business a success.

SEO Choosing, Domain, Friendly, Name, Spider, Traffic

As the world economy experiences a gloomy backdrop and continues to be on the brink of recession, its time to position yourself to a stand where you can still hope to profit from the recession.

There are several options you can consider to rise up in the shrinking economy, but an option that can really show remarkable results in every stage of your business lifecycle is search engine optimization.

SEO offers a platform for corporates, entrepreneurs, as well as individuals to promote their products and services across the web by helping them rank on top of search engines. The real essence of SEO is to ensure that profitable results are achieved regardless of the financial crises broadening and intensifying at every stage and suffocating the global economy.

Amidst all this, the point to focus is the SEO company one might open doors for as their solution provider. It may be a cake walk to hire one in no time, but, definitely not when you have to make sure the genuineness of the company which is a must.

With the right choice of an SEO company to work for you on an ongoing basis, you can expect better search engine rankings, which in turn compliment your SEO efforts with increased traffic. Long term sustainability and profitability are two factors that any company or individual will look forward to, and this is precisely what SEO can achieve if done the right way.

SEO done on a continual basis can help you beat your competition and gain more visibility and exposure by showing on the top of SERPs. Increased visibility creates more awareness about your website or blog and drives more targeted traffic which would otherwise be lost without SEO. Search engine optimization can help you plunge into a more comfortable zone by penetrating your target market and making the most out of your advertising dollars.

During economic recession, advertisers are more bound to find different means (online and offline) of advertising and promoting their products and services in order to sustain their business. However, these offline marketing mediums require a huge amount of money to promote a brand which may not be feasible for every person. It is at this point where one can hope to cash in on SEO which provides an opportunity to make all ends meet with affordable costs that are way less than offline marketing mediums.

If you are still considering your options to beat the global recession, its time to move forward with hiring an SEO professional who can potentially improve your ranking, performance, and save you time. However, it is important that you do not risk your company’s success with SEO practises that are questionable. Therefore, you must conduct a thorough research on SEO companies to avoid any damage some of them can cause to you by employing unethical techniques that are penalized by search engines.

So make your hiring decision today! Spot your SEO company, relieve yourself of the economic backdrop that can or has affected your performance and look over to the greener side of the fence – SEO Traffic Spider – a solution provider for all your SEO needs.

SEO Beat, Global, recession, Spider, Traffic